Education

Education Secretary John King Talks Testing, School Takeover

March 17th, 2016

U.S. Department of Education/flickr / U.S. Department of Education/flickr

Hear the broadcast version of the interview.Click to hear a longer version of the conversation.

It may have been hard to notice Tuesday in the midst of the presidential election buzz, but the country officially got a new education secretary.

John King, the former education commissioner for the state of New York, was sworn in this week.

His first event as secretary was a roundtable discussion in Atlanta Wednesday with students at Georgia State University. King spoke with students about the challenges that can cause some of them to drop out of school. Georgia State has drastically improved its graduation rate over the years, and has one of the best graduation rates for minority students in the country.

After that event, King had to rush to Alabama, but on the way there, he called WABE education reporter Martha Dalton. They began by talking about a big issue in Georgia schools: testing.

The topic was also controversial during King’s nomination. He has a reputation of supporting federally mandated tests. Both of Georgia’s senators — Republicans David Perdue and Johnny Isakson — voted against him. Isakson tweeted he and King had a “fundamental difference of opinion on the importance of state and local control of education.”